5th District Councilmember to hold town hall on medpot collectives Nov. 12

In the latest move by a member of city staff indicating that patient access should not be a particularly high priority in Long Beach’s coming medpot-collective regulations, dig this from a press release by 5th District Councilmember Gerrie Schipske’s office (which in part lifts information from her blog, gerrieschipske.com). Speaking of a November 12 town hall on medpot collectives Schipske is holding at the El Dorado Community Center, she says, “I have invited City Prosecutor, Tom Reeves and Deputy Police Chief, Blair to attend the meeting and to listen to the concerns of residents who do not want these facilities in our city” (emphasis added). If this sounds like We want to hear you—if you’re against them, when reached by telephone Schipske says this was not her intent. “Anyone is welcome to come out,” she says. “It’s just that almost exclusively I hear complaints about them.”

Whatever the case, there is a far more troubling section of the press release that seems to signal Schipske’s plausible patients-don’t-come-first agenda clearly enough:
•    Schipske also posted on her blog a list of proposals she would like City Attorney Robert Shannon to add to any ordinance, including a requirement that 65% or more of residents within 2,000 feet of any proposed medical marijuana dispensary must approve its location or the City will not permit it to operate.

This could mean that, with enough NIMBYism, medpot patients would be completely denied their right to medicine within city limits, since areas far enough from all residences to be unaffected by such a vote or whatever (there is no mention of logistics—how this tally would be achieved, how the city would fund it, etc.) are few and far between. “With a 2,000-foot radius it would have to be a public-private partnership: El Dorado Park, the airport, Los Cerritos Wetlands, the Port . . .” a local expert on Long Beach city layout notes. “[Schipske] thinks she is being crafty.”
Schipske protests this is not the case. “No, I believe there are [. . .] some industrial areas on the west side [not within 2,000 feet of any residence].” But she confirms that even if it were to turn out that there were no place in Long Beach where enough residents would proactively allow collectives (“We make people sign a petition [even] for preferential parking,” she notes), well . . . too bad for patients: “With the proliferation of dispensaries in LA County, they can get it elsewhere.”

Tags: Gerrie Schipske, Long Beach, medpot, TOM REEVES